Dictionary
by Silver Pard
Summary: Knowledge has always been his balm against the sores made by lack of understanding.
1. Smile

(**Smile **v.t./i._To make or have a facial expression indicating pleasure or amusement, with lips stretched and turning upwards at their ends; to express by smiling; to give (a smile) of a specified kind. ― _n._ an act of smiling; a smiling expression or aspect. ― **smile on** _or_ **at**, to look encouragingly on; (of a circumstance etc.) to favour.)_

Until the first time he was allowed into the city, the concept of 'smile' had remained a dictionary entry inside his head (he'd also had to annex the entries for 'pleasure' and 'amusement'), and the first time he'd seen what he assumed was a 'smile' he'd been stunned. Its giver was a middle-aged woman with greying hair and a tired face, reaching for her child in the street, and it made even her worn-out face look beautiful.

He'd stopped short in the middle of the street, fascinated at how such a little thing as stretching the lips and turning the corners up should be so stunning, when he realised that it was a similar expression to one Hojo wore sometimes, only without the maliciousness and cruelty. He'd decided then that if smiling could be twisted in such a manner it probably wasn't something he wanted to do, and it isn't until he faces Zack, who grins tentatively at him like he's the most fascinating creature he's ever seen that he wonders if maybe he's been missing out on something.

Zack is full of smiles and grins and smirks, and it takes him months to even begin to distinguish between each version, and even longer before he hesitantly tries to recognize what the differences are. Zack declares somewhere in the first tentative stages of 'friendship' (**friend**, _n_. person for whom one feels affection and respect; companion; helper; **-ship** amity; kindly feeling) that he's going to teach him to smile if it kills him. Sephiroth would have put money on it killing him in the beginning, but by the time Zack has managed to get him to see that what they really are is called friends he realises Zack is more a force of nature than anything, a hurricane in human form, tearing through and changing everything.

He begins to anticipate the day when Zack's lessons will finally sink in (he's learned not to doubt Zack's determination), which he realises after awhile is foolish, because this smiling business is harder than other people make it look. Zack is teaching him so many things, but to smile was the first goal, and he wants to achieve it – he's never liked losing (**lose**, _v_. losing, lost. 1. suffer loss; 2. get rid of; 3. fail to retain, find; 4. be bereaved of; 5. be defeated.)

He stands in front of the mirror and struggles to pinpoint which muscles are supposed to be manipulated to create a smile, and every attempt reflected back at him is skewed and awkward, less a smile than a grimace, something he knows too well. He'd give up, if only he didn't know Zack is determined to get him to smile, and the methods will become more outlandish and humiliating if he doesn't get the hang of it soon.

He studies other people's smiles with the intensity he usually reserves for new mission orders and sword techniques, and tries to find some common theme in them that he can latch on to and use as a starting point. Some people's smiles show teeth, and some are simple twists of the lips, and some are part of laughter (**laughter, **_n_. 1. the sound of laughing; 2. the activity of laughing; the manifestation of joy or mirth; of scorn.) and make the corners of their eyes crinkle at the edges. He discovers there are smiles known as 'genuine' smiles, involving movement of the zygomaticus major muscle near the mouth and the orbicularis oculi muscle near the eyes; 'genuine' because there are studies that suggest they are an involuntary response to a pure emotion (**emotion**, _n_. 1. A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes; a feeling; 2. a state of mental agitation or disturbance; 3. the part of the consciousness that involves feeling; sensibility.)

He asks Zack eventually what this means, after long hours spent trying to figure it out and coming up with nothing, and Zack looks for a moment like he's about to be sick, though he can't think why – the cafeteria food is improving lately. "It means... a smile comes from the heart, y'know? It's... ah, shit, Seph--"

(**nickname**, _n_. a descriptive name adding to or replacing the actual name of a person, place or thing; a familiar or shortened form of a proper name.)

"You'll know, okay?"

The first time he feels the beginnings of a smile he is watching Zack tease a new recruit about his hair – chocobo! he yells, cackling madly, and the poor recruit is bright red with embarrassment and obviously wishing he could sink into the floor – and he feels something at the edges of his mouth, twitching. He suppresses it out of long practise, and never realises it might have been what he worked so hard to find, because it was so effortless.

The first time he really, truly smiles, is when he sees snow (**snow**, _n_. 1. precipitation falling from clouds in the form of ice crystals; 2. a layer of snowflakes (white crystals of frozen water) covering the ground. 3. _v._ fall as snow; "It was snowing all night") for the first time. It is on a mission to the Northern Continent, and Zack is scooping up the substance, pressing it between his hands, compacting it into a roughly spherical shape. He throws it at him with more accuracy than he's ever shown on the shooting range, and ice-cold water drips down his chest.

Zack's expression is expectant, and after a moment's confusion he realises Zack expects him to reciprocate the gesture, and so he does. When his first snowball smashes into Zack's face and makes him gasp and utter high squeals of mock-horror, he smiles, but Zack is so busy hysterically brushing the snow away he misses it, and neither of them realise what has just occurred.

Back in the city, he watches people smile from a distance, and thinks it unfair that they make it look so easy.

Zack isn't psychic; he doesn't know to tell him that the unfairness is actually that he finds it so hard.


	2. Face

(**Face **n. **1. **_the front of the head from the forehead to the chin; the expression of the facial features; a grimace._ **2**_ the surface of a thing, especially the functional surface of a tool etc.; the upper or forward facing side, the front; the dial plate of a clock._ **3. **_an outward appearance, an aspect_. **4. **_composure; effrontery, nerve._ **5. **_esteem_. **6. **_a typeface_. v.t./i. **1. **_to have or to turn the face towards; to be opposite to._ **2. **_to meet resolutely, not to shrink from; to meet (an opponent) in a contest; to present itself to._)

"The eyes are the window to the soul," Zack says, in that particular tone of voice Sephiroth has learnt means quoting.

There is a single beat pause between 'eyes' and 'are'. The word soul is stretched out, a string of pearls, the _sou_ deep and low, like a tunnel in the dark, making the _l_ following it sound sudden, sharp and high, like a bird bursting free in a flurry of wings.

Could someone else – Zack – look into his eyes and see what is inside of him? He tries to imagine his irises becoming clear as glass, no longer a pale mirror reflecting back everything in their gaze he fails to understand and instead allowing them to look inside of him.

Would they see the retina, the optic nerve leading to the grey whorls and coils of the brain? And within the brain, snaps of electricity, faster than knowledge can comprehend, nerves and synapses, the inner workings of his central nervous system?

Or would they see what Zack's odd little idiom seems to think they would: what he is feeling, coiled tight and small to fit inside his eyes?

To Sephiroth, the eyes are blank and unreadable, revealing nothing. Iris, pupil, sclera. Nothing more. He can examine the pigmentation of the iris, though, finds it interesting to name and chart the colours and composition thereof, like an abstract painting that might tell him something if he stares enough. Other people, however, seem to find this disturbing. Zack says it's disconcerting (**disconcert **_v_. to disturb the self-possession of, to fluster) to have someone stare straight into the eyes, by which Sephiroth understands he is acting yet again in a manner that suggests he is utterly oblivious to the subtle intricacies and rituals that structure human interaction.

He finds human faces to be like a puzzle in 3D… no, like one of those immense, intricate pictures formed entirely out of knotted strands that the older residents of the northern continent are famed for making during winter months. Intriguing, but meaningless. Only the basic emotions are open to him; all other emotions are spread like webs across the face, labyrinthine interconnecting strands forming arcane patterns, dizzyingly complex, too overwhelming to decipher either the details or the whole.

For example, Zack has a particular expression when irritated, lowering his brows, narrowing his eyes, mouth tightening in a _moue_ of exasperation. However, a single quirk of an eyebrow destroys this, makes it a self-mocking pout. A slight downward curl of his lips and a tightening of the skin around his eyes hints at fury. If he tilts his head downwards, the edges of his mouth flattened: disappointment.

To Sephiroth this array is bewildering, as confusing to him as the advanced mathematics he practises are to Zack.

His only comfort (**comfort** _n._ 1. a state of physical or mental well-being or contentment; 2. relief of suffering or grief, consolation; a person or thing that gives this. _― v._ to give comfort to, to soothe in grief, to console) is that his own face, according Zack, is far harder to read. This is because people are used to reading the emotions upon the face, Zack tells him, and because he doesn't know how to express such things as they do, he is therefore a blank to their fine-tuned senses, adapted to minutiae of human expression.

He imagines it sometimes, looking into the mirror – nothing but empty white space in place of eyes and nose and mouth, nothing but void. All his personal features just wiped away, leaving him as blank and inaccessible as the white walls of his childhood, no way in or out.

Zack has an interesting face, like a composition in affability. His smile is wide, and his eyes crinkle at the corners easily, well-worn grooves like corrugated iron above a slightly crooked nose, broken in his childhood. These things talk to other people of sociability (**sociable** _adj._ fond of company; characterised by friendly companionship) and laughter and caring (**care **_v_. feel concern or interest; 2. to feel affection or a liking for or a willingness to do; 3. to provide for). He is the one who greets the new recruits, the I-care-about-you face of ShinRa military. There is something about his tanned features that sets people at ease, something about all those idiosyncratic characteristics gathered together that says _I'm your friend_ instead of _be afraid of me_. Everyone but him seems able to understand that language instantly, and gravitate toward Zack, planets orbiting a star.

He wonders what his own features would say if he knew how to speak that voiceless language.

To Sephiroth, Zack's looks talk of genetics, of the dominant characteristics present in Gongaga; the open secret of his heritage written in his black hair and his blue eyes – violet, Zack insists, for how can such a specimen of perfection such as himself have something so mundane as _blue_ eyes – and his slightly above average height.

In Zack's shape and colouring Sephiroth can see that at least one side of his family (**family **_n_.1. group of people related by blood, marriage; 2. one's children; 3. people with a common ancestor; 4. group of allied genera of animals or plants, usually a subdivision of an order) once had strong roots in the mountains; in his bronzed skin he can read a genetic propensity to tan instead of burn, bred from countless more generations in the temperate weather of the Gongagan plains.

When he tries to read his own heritage however, his face and body is as blank to him as it is to others. There is something to the slant of his eyes, the construction of his face and his lean build that might indicate something of a Wutai inheritance, but his height is abnormal, as his colouring. He could not say, however, whether these things are natural or a result of Hojo's tampering. He has never seen another individual with hair like his, so he suspects that at least cannot be a gift from his progenitors (**parent** _n._ 1. one who has begotten or borne offspring, a father or mother; 2. a forefather; 3. a person who has adopted a child; 4. an animal or plant from which others are derived; 5. a source from which other things are derived).

He doesn't need the presence of Zack's parents to be able to trace the ancestry of their child's face, but the total absence of his own is different somehow. Perhaps the reason he is incapable of seeing his own genetic inheritance as clearly as he can see Zack's is that he doesn't like the thought of what he might find.


	3. God

(**God** n. **1.**_ a superhuman being worshipped as having power over nature and human affairs. _**2.**_ God, the supreme being, creator and ruler of the universe in monotheistic religions. _**3**_ an image of a god, an idol._ **4.**_ a person or thing greatly admired or adored. ― **God forbid**, may it not be so. **God-forsaken** _adj._ dismal, wretched. **God knows**, we (or I) cannot know. **God willing**, if circumstances allow._)

"Zack, what is 'god'?" It is the day following a major battle, and the scent of blood and death is still in his nose. If he takes deep, centred breaths, it is calming. He has grown so used to it he is beginning to feel the edges of panic (**panic** _n. _asudden, uncontrollable fear or alarm; an infectious fright) whenever it is no longer present.

Zack's hands stop moving, cease carving odd, twisted shapes out of dead wood. "…Are you sure you're asking the right person?"

He doesn't say it, but he knows Zack will read it into his silence: Who else am I to ask?

"Well, why do you want to know?"

He wonders why Zack would deny him this – _Zack_, who thinks there is no taboo that cannot be broken, no rule that cannot be stomped on. Is it something so secret? "I heard the men." He shrugs his shoulders, a pale imitation of the gesture he has seen Zack often do as a indication of feigned indifference. "Before the battle. They were talking to thin air, only they called it 'god'. Who or what is 'god', and why were they talking to it?"

Zack stares at him for a long moment. Sephiroth is used to this type of reaction, and bears it patiently.

"God… god is supposed to be this… um… super being… thing… that has power over nature and human affairs. Y'know, ruler and creator of the universe. Er…"

He wonders at Zack's sudden ineloquence. Zack usually has the astonishing capability of being able to say an incredible amount about absolutely nothing, and all in one breath. "If it has control of the entire universe, why would my men be talking to it?"

"It's… difficult."

"Difficult." He has a vague idea of how his voice sounds in this moment. He recognises the way Zack's shoulders hunch, the way his body language alters, becomes defensive, the automatic fight-or-flight instinct being instigated. Human body language is something he has studied hard - he is now capable of dividing the responses into four: truth, lie, fight or flight. Fear, though, is something he has never needed a dictionary entry for.

"It's called praying. And God listens because God is… God is supposed to be your friend. He looks out for you." He can smell Zack's desperation, slightly sour and tinged with awkwardness, but he still isn't answering the question, as his academic teachers would insist.

("Factual, technically brilliant, but there is no _feeling_ in it, Sephiroth. You will never succeed here; the question relies on you elaborating upon your _personal _response to the issue, and you seem to have none.")

Sephiroth learnt patience and passivity in his childhood, so it must be Zack's own fault for teaching him to ask and expect answers.

"Why?"

"Because. Just… because, okay?"

_Why?_ The need to know is gnawing at the back of his mind; the blankness where the knowledge of 'god' should go a constant irritant.

Knowledge has always been Sephiroth's balm against the sores made by lack of understanding.

The silence between them is unpleasant, partly because it is so very rare – Zack always has something to say.

"Zack, _why_ do you think there is a god?"

"I'm not a theology expert, Seph." There is a note in his voice however, a flicker of anticipation (**anticipate **_v_. 1. to realise beforehand, foretaste or foresee; 2. to expect, to be sure of; 3. to perform (an action) before another has had time to act; 4. to answer (a question), obey (a command) or satisfy a request before it is made; 5. to nullify, prevent or forestall by taking countermeasures in advance; 6. to consider or mention before the proper time; 7. to be before (another) in doing, thinking, achieving, etc; 8. to think, speak, act or feel an emotional response in advance.) in his tone that tells Sephiroth the topic is not over with. He repeats his question, and is gratified at the answer that bursts out. "Well, why _wouldn't_ there be a god? You know a lot of science, don't you?"

It is clear Zack expects no answer, for which Sephiroth is as close to grateful (**grateful** _a. _thankful; feeling gratitude) as he knows how to be. "Just _look _at this place, Sephiroth, this world. The way it all works together, in balance. How could it just come about by accident?"

He is silent for a long moment, studying his own hands – carpals, metacarpals, phalanges, brachioradialis, palmaris longus, digital arteries – and then contemplates what his hands are capable of, a secret that cannot be told in the names of bones and muscle and veins, which are just like anyone else's.

"Even if it is designed, how does this give you a good god, a 'friendly' god who listens to your prayers?"

He feels almost sorry for the look on Zack's face. "Let us say," he continues rapidly, before his friend can begin a defence, "That everything in this world, on this planet, was made by a deity. Even so, you may know only what the craftsmanship of its work tells you. It is not perfect, for nothing in this world is perfect. It's not eternal, for everything you see is mortal. So perhaps this was a… a _trial run_. Perhaps God has left. Perhaps it is dead. You can't even be sure it is only one god – is it not more logical to have a team of gods? Name one _building_ designed and built solely by one man. Compare that to the world, the complexity of it. Every atom of the simplest organism… Zack?"

Zack appears to be choking. "Jeeze. Absorbed more of Hojo's ramblings then you thought, huh?"

Sephiroth wonders if these silences are going to become a regular occurrence. Perhaps there is a reason he has never brought much thought to bear on the idea of God. He thinks he might hate (**hate** _v_. dislike intensely; detest. ― _n_. loathing; **hatred** _n_, profound ill-will.) it for these silences, for throwing this distance between the only friend he has.

"Okay," Zack says at last. "Let's forget about that stuff."

"Wonderful debating style," he remarks without rancour, surveying the only friend he has through half-closed eyes. Zack's features blur and soften this way, become less real, less dangerous. He is about to give up and leave, when Zack gives him the best answer he is capable of:

"God, Seph, is above mortal things. That makes him or her or it or whatever God. But God cares about mortal lives, and that makes Him truly divine."

I don't understand, he wants to say to Zack's tense shoulders, to his impassive back. _I don't understand._ There are other words, bitter words, desperate words, and he wants to ask, why won't you help me? but Zack is already chasing after one of his many, many friends and even mako-enhanced hearing could only do so much.

It will take him some time before he realises what question it was he really wanted to ask: "If your God cares why doesn't He help _me?_ If He's so _divine_ why does He allow such ugliness (me) to exist in this world?"

(**Divine**: _a_. pertaining to God; god-like; sacred. _n. _theologian, priest. _n_. **divinity **1. God; 2. theology; 3; quality of being divine)

He turns the entry for divine over and over in his mind, establishes links – God, Religion, Faith etc; Antonym: Infernal, which in turn leads to words such as hellish, accursed, diabolical – and wonders.

He remembers a conversation about him between new recruits one day: "Who cares how old he is? He's immortal, he's a _god_." He thinks he might understand from this something more important than what Zack has tried to tell him.

"God." He murmurs, "Noun. Entry four, a person or thing greatly admired or adored."

A person or thing greatly admired or adored. _If I can be god for other people, why can I not be my own?_


	4. Perfect

(**Perfect** adj. _**1. **__complete and with all necessary qualities; faultless, not deficient. __**2.**__ exact, precise. __**3.**_(colloq.)_ excellent, most satisfactory. __**4. **__entire, unqualified. __**5. **_(gram., of a tense)_ denoting a completed event or action viewed in relation to the present. __**Perfection **_n. _**1.**__ making or being perfect; faultlessness. __**2. **__a perfect person or thing.)_

"You must be perfect."

These are the earliest words Sephiroth can recall. He cannot tell how old he was then, because he had not learnt to divide up days and nights, weeks and months. He had no concept of time, and none of language – it is hindsight that makes what had been incomprehensible sound combinations form words, form a maxim that will be repeated throughout his childhood (**childhood** _n_. 1. the time of a person's life when they are a child; 2. the state of a child between infancy and adolescence), that he must be perfect..

When he was younger Sephiroth understood only that he was capable of many things that pleased the Professors. He knew from Gast's scattered notes that in comparison – to who or what, he did not know and has never been overly concerned by – he was faster, stronger; he was capable, physically, of many things those others were not, and he knew from Hojo's habit of muttering under his breath that this pleased them.

He knew also that he frightened people who did not wear white coats – and eventually even the white coats became afraid. He knew they were frightened because they reacted to him the same way he reacted to them. In this way he learnt he was different, he was not what a child should be.

It did not bother him until he met Zack, and sometimes he could hate Zack for teaching him shame (**shame** _n. _1 emotion of regret and contrition, caused by consciousness of guilt, dishonour, etc; 2. disgrace; 3. _coll_. unfair happening; hard luck; _v._ 1. make ashamed; 2. bring shame, disgrace on). Before he met Zack he knew only that he was different; he had not cared over much for other people's responses because Hojo had prized that difference and he had wanted desperately to please Hojo, whose high regard was so rarely given, if at all.

It took him years to see that whatever he did was not enough.

"You must be perfect," Hojo cautioned when he was six years old, watching him with his fathomless black eyes, his skeletal fingers twitching, itching for the tools of his trade, for scalpels and needles and hypodermics, for the thousand different objects with which he might write on the canvas of Sephiroth's skin, to make him into the vision of perfection he could be.

Sephiroth remembers this, oddly, when Zack talks of his parents – loving, embarrassed, deliberately dismissive. He cannot understand why Zack feels the need to pretend his parents are no longer anything to do with him. But then, there are many things he cannot understand.

Perfection, for instance, and why he cannot achieve it.

Sephiroth's writing is neat and regular, so regular it might have been typed. His voice is without inflection and blank; since childhood, it has never been heard outside of laboratories or battlefields to change in pitch or tone. His movements are the minimum required for any action; no energy is expended with needless gestures or pointless moves. He appears among the ShinRa echelons as spotlessly groomed as the prize pet he knows himself to be, no matter what the circumstances.

And yet Hojo is not pleased. He is unsure why Hojo's dismissive attitude continues to gnaw at him – he is like that with everyone after all. It is simply that Sephiroth has spent all his life trying to please him in his command, and has not succeeded.

He plays the piano faultlessly but without passion (**passion **n. strong feeling; enthusiasm; 2. sexual desire; 3. wrath) which renders his performances hollow. He can sketch, and those sketches are uniformly accurate and anatomically correct, and as bland as a medical textbook, simply expressions of technical ability. He cooks for himself – perfection is everything, and everything must be perfect – and what is made is identical to the last time he used the same recipe.

"You must be perfect," Hojo said, the day he became General. "_Perfect_, do you understand me?"

He wishes he had said no. What measure of perfection? Hojo's must be different to everyone else's, he decides. And just what were the consequences if he was not?

Hojo expects him to be God, Zack mutters, an edge to his voice that anyone else would recognise as bitterness or sarcasm, when Sephiroth tries to explain just why he is so 'uptight'. "It's _stupid_, Sephiroth," he snaps, watching him as he covers a sheet with incomprehensible mathematical symbols. "Tell him to shove his perfection up his ass, the hypocrite." (**hypocrisy** _n. _pretending to be better morally (**moral** _a. _relating to generally accepted ideas of right and wrong; virtuous; of right conduct) than one is **-crite**, such a person; _a. **-**_**critical**_)_

Sephiroth stares at him for a long time, feeling something inside of him twist with agreement, acknowledgement that it is stupid, and it is hypocritical of Hojo to expect such a thing from him. But perfection isn't really so much to ask, is it? For someone like him, it shouldn't be so difficult at all.

"You must be perfect!"

If it takes becoming God to at last get that praise, to find perfection, he might just consider it. God seems conspicuously absent, after all, and is he not god for some people already?

But still, it is moments like these that drive Sephiroth to fight. He loves battle. He has never been horrified or disturbed by it – he knows he was bred for this after all. He is pleased when the option arises to take violent means against an enemy. In battle, he may wear as much blood as he wishes. He may stumble or fall, and no one will take note of it. He may yell himself hoarse. He may use more motions than is strictly necessary to his purpose. He may be less than perfect.

And nobody but himself, it seems, can tell the difference.


	5. Changeling

(**Changeling** n. _a child or thing believed to have substituted secretly for another, esp. by elves etc._)

There is no one moment to Sephiroth's discovery that he isn't considered human.

He is a year old, and he remembers, as clearly as he remembers the first time he met Zack, Gast leaning over him, his eyes (guilt-stricken (**guilt**, _n._ 1. the state of having committed an offence; 2. remorse caused by feeling responsible for some offence) and a word, 'changeling'. He did not discover the meaning of it until he was six, after Gast disappeared.

"It would be unethical… _if_ it were human," the doctor says irritably to a squeamish assistant.

His skin, his blood is burning green, and he is screaming and howling, but only in his head, his face contorted with effort of keeping his screams locked away safe within himself. "Inhuman," one of the assistant nurses says, and he hears it clearly – into utter silence the word 'inhuman' glitters like the sun on the edges of broken mirror pieces.

He sees himself in a mirror for the first time; he sees his own eyes and is afraid of them.

The look on the doctor's face when he tries to pull away, his skin too sensitive to bear his cold professional touch: the angry, insulted contempt of a man for an ungrateful animal he is trying to help against his better judgement.

The looks on the faces of hardened SOLDIERs when he is introduced.

He is standing before the President, and the Turk at his side can't stop looking at his eyes, taking quick, furtive glances, a crow pecking at carrion. Sephiroth stares at the President without blinking, able to see the faint sweat-sheen on his forehead, to hear the rustling of cloth against cloth as he shifts uncomfortably, to smell the faint, acid tinge of his horror.

"Angel," a little girl says when she sees him standing on the other side of the street. He knows his own nature when he hears that word: beautiful and monstrous, pitiless in his apparent perfection.

The looks on the faces of grateful SOLDIERs when a battle is over with.

Screaming, a warrior in Wutai colours calls him a monster (**monster** _n._ 1. person, animal, thing of abnormal shape or huge size; 2. abnormally wicked, cruel person; _a._ **monstrous** 1. like a monster; 2. shocking; 3. hideous; _n_. **monstrosity** 1. freak; 2. badly made, hideous object; 3. Sephiroth), and he feels the truth of it in Zack's repeated and insistent denials. "Doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about," Zack says, over and over in different phrases, and Sephiroth reads between the words and knows what is really being said: that if he were not a monster Zack would not feel the need to deny it.

The eyes of hundreds of new recruits, all of them sharing a single thought, wearing a single look: awe. Worship. Adoration.

He used to hear voices beneath the surface and around the corners. The ability died after too long in Midgar, after he realised Zack heard nothing and he pretended he too could hear nothing until the pretence became the truth. He used to feel the Planet's heart beating: a slow, inexorable throbbing beneath the thin mantle of earth, but it was beyond his precious strength to touch back; he destroyed the connection himself. He still feels its wariness of him, knows its word for him.

The word is _abomination_.

(**abominate** _v._ detest, loathe; _a._ **abominable**; _adv_ **abominably; **_n._ **abomination** object of disgust)

* * *

Sephiroth likes the thought of changelings. It makes him feel part of something, even if it is something twisted and mistaken.

He imagines himself, the infant that was a normal child, sleeping in a crib near his mother. His real mother, not the mother he sometimes hears in whispers when the green is in his veins, in his head. He imagines his mother in earth tones, like the Ancient he half-remembers, singing to her daughter, fearless and devoted. He saw them once. He had envied (**envy**, _v_. begrudge another's success, possession etc; feel jealous of; _n._ covetousness) the feeling between them. So his mother has soft dark eyes – or green, he might be able to stand that – and she has brown hair, or black, maybe? and it's long enough that it slides past her shoulders, long enough for her to gather some in one hand as she leans over his crib and flick it gently across his smiling infant face, painting him in broad strokes.

Maybe his child-self has black hair like his mother or father – why is there no father in this picture? – black as sin, black as the comforting darkness of the womb, of the night, of the freedom from other people. Not bright, pitiless white that pretends to be perfect, that gives the impression of goodness and light; that lights up too much and gives him no place to hide.

He imagines shadows entering the room in the night (the shadows wear Hojo's voice, walk with his hunched walk, move long skeletal fingers in his scissor-handed way) and taking the child, the Sephiroth that would have grown to be a normal man, and replacing it with a white-haired blank-eyed baby with fingers a little too long, eyes that don't blink, a deep adult voice speaking gravely from tiny infant lips. A pale copy. His mother should have thrown him on the fire.

Perhaps the horror of his transformation killed his mother.

He wonders if somewhere out there the shadows have kept the real Sephiroth locked away. If they have, perhaps he will find him one day. See what he might have been. See who he should have been. They will opposites perhaps. His true self will have dark hair, he imagines. Black. He likes the thought of having black hair. He is tired of _silver_, tired of the spotlessness and the glitter of the word. His eyes… they will be green, he supposes, he is quite fond of the colour; but they will not be tiny pinpricks of gleaming green light in the dark. They will not have elliptical pupils, like a cat, like a serpent – like a changeling-child, needed to save him from the glow of the magic in his body that tries to get out of his eyes. He will not be described as fluid, as feline, as _angelic_. His true self will smile and laugh a lot, will be a man people are comfortable with, will be someone people are capable of liking, of loving.

He knows this is fantasy. He knows he is as he has always been.

(specimen exhibits signs of advanced growth; does not however respond to visual or auditory stimulus as expected in comparison to conventional standards of development, e.g. does not vocalise or smile in response to being spoken to, shows no excitement at the sound of approaching footsteps, voices etc.)

A note in different writing, too soft and cursive to belong to the professors, angrily struck through.

(Gast's steady, clear hand, _Sephiroth walked unaided for the first time today. Very pleased._)

(specimen's co-ordination advancing rapidly. Muscular development and motor skills proceed at accelerated rate. Immune system compensates rapidly for defects made viable by lack of proteins and antibodies present in milk (influence of J cells?). Verbal communication seemingly impaired.)

A picture of himself, solemn and indifferent. His eyes are pale green, his pupils spherical. He is a year old, perhaps – he does not know how to judge the age of a child from size or shape; he has seen so few of them.

(_Sephiroth spoke today. His first word(s): Mother. Crisis. Blood. Greengreengreen. _

_I almost wish he had not spoken at all._)

He imagines having the ability to twist his body into the shape of somebody else, somebody normal. Bones and skin stretched and snapped into a different size and body shape, the cartilage and bone of the face being pushed and pulled into shape like wet clay, every hair removed and grown in another shade, a different length. To change his looks, voice, words; to take the image of someone else and walk in their skin.

Foolishness, as Hojo would say.


End file.
